Disappearing act

Sunday

Jul 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2012 at 12:02 PM

Nearly every spring for the past 14 years, George Keeney has set out for a forest somewhere in Ohio, carrying animal carcasses and American burying beetles. His goal each trip is to reintroduce an endangered species last seen in the state in 1974. But every following year, he and other scientists have returned to the sites and found nothing.

Pamela Engel, The Columbus Dispatch

Nearly every spring for the past 14 years, George Keeney has set out for a forest somewhere in Ohio, carrying animal carcasses and American burying beetles.

His goal each trip is to reintroduce an endangered species last seen in the state in 1974.

But every following year, he and other scientists have returned to the sites and found nothing. Despite 16 releases totaling 3,679 beetles at three sites, there is no evidence that their efforts have paid off.

“I’m optimistic that they’re out there,” said Keeney, an Ohio State University entomologist. “I think they are multiplying. I have to tell myself that.”

In May, Keeney was part of a team that released 100 pairs of beetles in the Wilds near Zanesville.

They won’t know until next spring whether the insects survived the winter. • “I don’t see any reason why not,” he said. “As long as they have carrion, I think they’re going to do what they do best.”

What they do best is bury dead animals. The black-and-orange insects bury the carcasses of small animals and lay eggs in the surrounding soil. The carcass feeds the young when they emerge.

“They’re recyclers,” said Dan Beetem, the director of animal management at the Wilds.

“They’re part of that group of animals and organisms we don’t really think about that help get rid of the stuff in the landscape that we don’t want to look at.”

In a nutshell, the beetles turn animal decay into compost and help keep the forest’s ecosystem in balance.

Some people think the insects disappeared because of increased competition for carrion from larger scavengers. Others say there is a decrease in the types of small animals that burying beetles use for food and breeding. Or it could be a loss of habitat.

“I think scavengers have played a role in the decline of many species,” said Carolyn Caldwell, a program administrator for the Ohio Division of Wildlife. “They’re just more capable of out-competing a beetle for a piece of carrion.”

The burying beetle was added to state and federal endangered-species lists in 1989. It was last seen near Old Man’s Cave in Hocking Hills in 1974.

“Just because they weren’t listed (as endangered) until the 1980s doesn’t mean they weren’t at critically low numbers for a very long time,” said T.J. Miller, chief of the division of endangered species for Region 3 of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “They had to get in line with everything else that was being listed.”

Once the beetle made the list, Keeney began the effort to bring it back to Ohio.

He led the first trip on July 24, 1998, to the Waterloo Wildlife Area in southeastern Ohio, where 29 pairs were released.

The researchers have had some luck finding offspring a few months after each release but not the following springs. Still, Keeney said he believes they are there. Somewhere.

“It’s just a question of the needle in the haystack,” he said. “(It’s as though) you’re going up into the Ohio Stadium to look for a penny out there on the field.”

Burying beetles can travel as far as 6 miles in one night. That fact has Keeney theorizing that the beetles have fanned out.

The lack of answers has not stopped repopulation efforts.

“As long as the Division of Wildlife is willing to fund the project, we’d be willing to do it,” said Dave Horn, an OSU entomologist and professor emeritus.

In 1998, entomologists thought they would succeed within 10 years.

“At some point, we’re hoping to find the right combination of habitat and prey base that will work,” Beetem said. “Until then, we will keep working.”

The Ohio teams get their beetles from zoos in St. Louis and Cincinnati. Before the beetles are released, each is marked for identification. Adult burying beetles emerge two months after hatching. When researchers return to the release sites, they use traps with rotting chickens to try to attract the insects.

There are success stories. Researchers have been able to reintroduce burying beetles on two islands near Massachusetts. Experts say location — there was no place for the beetles to go — played a role in finding them again.

“When you take away the water, the beetles can go quite a distance away from the release site,” Beetem said.